Inkling Co-founder and CEO Matthew MacInnis tells us that, two years ago, the team set out to build a publishing platform that would redefine digital media, starting with the reinvention of the textbook. But in doing so, they discovered that to reinvent books, they’ve had to go back to ground zero and re-imagine the entire printing process itself. Desktop publishing has been around for decades, but to do it right, MacInnis said, this required them to reset the type, so to speak.
This long process culminated in the “software environment” the startup officially unveiled today, called Inkling Habitat. This new platform targets the other end of the spectrum from iBooks: — professional publishers — giving them an industrial, or enterprise, platform that includes everything they need to create and publish interactive content for both the iPad and the Web. “No desktop software, and no constraints of the printed page.”

Yes, there are going to be a lot of startups trying to capitalize on Valentine’s Day. Postmates, however, has the advantage of doing something cool — something that involves free chocolate.
When the app launched last year at TechCrunch Disrupt, the coverage described it as the “Uber of packages.” On its face, the comparison might sound a little silly (at least, it did to me) but in the same way that Uber works because town car drivers often have downtime, Postmates is trying to take advantage of the fact that couriers and bike messengers aren’t always scheduled to make deliveries, and can instead take last-minute delivery requests via the Postmates app.

Seattle and London-based nFluence Media emerged from two years of stealth mode to announce it has raised $3 million for a deal-targeting technology whose first application will be a daily deal aggregating iPhone app, due out later this month. However, the company is not necessarily just another player in the overly crowded “daily deals” space. Instead, the technology being funded here is an anonymous self-profiling system that can expand into other verticals, including future uses with mobile carriers, cable/satellite TV operators and shopping mall owners.

Here’s a roundup of recent stories on TechCrunch Europe:
— On-demand car service startup Cabify - which I likened to the ‘Uber of Europe’ - is starting to gain momentum in its hometown (Madrid, Spain), but plans to expand to 15 more European cities in 2012.
— In the UK, private sales club SecretSales has raised £6.3 million in funding to double down on its expansion in the country.
— TCEU Editor Mike Butcher traveled to Latvia for the first TechCrunch Baltics meetup, learned more about the tech scene in the country as well as that in Lithuania and Estonia, and saw some interesting startups.
More stories after the jump.

Motorola’s latest handsets have been pretty impressive. The Razr and Razr Maxx, in particular, are excellent handsets. But it would seem that the (almost) freshly acquired company has no intentions of resting on its laurels.
Rather than sticking with its usual OMAP-powered devices, Motorola has slapped an Intel Medfield chip on to this anonymous device. And lest we forget, Ice Cream Sandwich is finally coming along for the ride. (It sure does pay off to be under Google’s wing, doesn’t it?)

It would appear Dropbox is building a pretty wide ecosystem around its service and the latest today is an integration with WorldDesk. Who are they? Well they provide desktop virtualisation software, and they’ve just launched a beta cloud-based desktop delivery platform leveraging Dropbox.
Right now WorldDesk lets you access your “desktop” (whatever that is these days) from any device,allowing access to your applications and personalised desktop from your physical machine. Using WorldDesk, you could use a simple USB drive, or access your desktop from a smartphone, for instance.

Amazon is opening a 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Middletown, Delaware, which is the e-commerce giant’s second facility in the state. Amazon says that the new center will create 850 full-time jobs, and will cost $90 million.
Amazon’s fulfillment centers enables the company and third-party merchants to store inventory and fulfill orders. The Middletown center joins Amazon’s New Castle fulfillment facility, which was opened in 1997. Amazon says that the New Castle center currently employs “hundreds of full-time workers,” but it sounds like the new facility will be larger. The Middletown facility is expected to be complete this fall.

There are few aspects of growing a business that are easy. But when you think about the big picture, one of the most significant challenges — besides hiring attractive, productive interns — is customer acquisition. Not every business scales like Facebook; many have to fight tooth-and-nail for every client, sell their firstborn, do whatever it takes. And once those customers are on board, the most successful companies make it a point to listen to them, hear their feedback, iterate, tweaking the user experience of their business/service/platform until the cows come home if that’s what’s required.
Sure, there’s something to be said for the “ask forgiveness not permission” strategy, but the recent PR fiascos of Airbnb and Path prove, if anything, that prioritizing transparency and communication with customers can save you from a lot of headaches.

No, silly, this isn’t about murder - it’s a program to remove people from a photo! Scalado has created a photo-taking system that allows you to selectively remove people in a photo. How does it work? It basically interpolates the “clean” version of the scene by watching the moving, live objects. It’s not rocket science, but it’s pretty cool.

The Linux Foundation today posted their first ever Linux Jobs Report, created in conjunction with tech job site Dice.com. The report examines the current demand for Linux talent, and identifies a few interesting trends.
Of the 2,300 survey respondents, eight in ten said that hiring Linux talent is a priority in 2012, and more than half of firms surveyed said that they’re increasing Linux hires relative to jobs created in other skill areas.